Summer Meeting. 29 



consumer with your products for highest prices with least labor and 

 expense, you have gained the object. To obtain best results in profits, 

 economy is essential with the producer as well as with the buyer or con- 

 sumer, for the enormous waste resulting from neglect of quality is a 

 loss to both. 



It is generally cheaper in the long run to pay full value for a first 

 class article, than to pay half price for inferior trash you can not use to 

 advantage. 



In addition to supply and demand, the value of every article of 

 commodity in the commercial world is rated in accordance with its 

 quality; even gold is rated higher than silver in the political world. 

 (Excuse me if I hinted politics in a horticultural meeting.) 



There is a limit to quantity but there is no limit to quality, l^otico 

 reports and quotations from commission men on strawberries the present 

 season. The other day, fifty car loads at Chicago in one day ! Some of 

 them did not pay freight and refrigeration while fancy berries were 

 wanted and sold at $2.00 per crate. I want to relate a circumstance that 

 occurred here lat Peirce City about twenty-five years ago. I was sitting 

 in front of Mr. Smith's grocery store one day talking with him, when a 

 man drove up and said: "Smith, let me sell you some peaches." Smith 

 looked at the peaches and said: "I don't want them." The man offered 

 them at 10 cents per bushel, rather than to haul them back home. Smith 

 declined to buy them at any price. About twenty minutes later, another 

 man drove up and said: "Smith, let me sell you some peache-^," Smith 

 looked at them and asked : "What do you want for them ?" "A dollar fi 

 bushel," was the answer. "All right, I'll take them," said Smith. Well, 

 you can imagine the difference between the peaches. The first lot 

 was a wagon load of little, hard seedlings, shook from the trees. The 

 second lot contained about five bushels of as fine peaches as I ever saw. 

 Big as the other fellow's (small) pumpkins. 



This transaction was significant to me regarding quality and quan- 

 tity. Last year, I sold all my grapes at 25 cents per 8 po'imd basket 

 from about an acre and did not have enough to supply the demand, while 

 at the same time I saw grapes in big boxes, tubs, slop buckets (where 

 they belonged) selling at one cent per pound and they were dear at that. 



